1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a control apparatus, a spine-jacket-width calculation system, a spine-jacket-width calculating method and a storage medium storing a spine-jacket-width calculating program and, more particularly, relates to a control apparatus, a spine-jacket-width calculation system, a spine-jacket-width calculating method and a storage medium storing a spine-jacket-width calculating program which calculate a spine jacket width required for performing jacketed-book binding.
2. Description of Related Art
There are image forming apparatuses having the function of performing bookbinding by applying an adhesive paste to one sides of plural printed objects and enwrapping them in a single paper sheet as a jacket, in addition to post-processing such as punching and stapling, as post-processing for printed objects which are outputted printed paper sheets. This bookbinding is referred to as “case binding”.
The jacket used for case binding is constituted by a front jacket positioned on the upper surface of the bound book, a back jacket positioned on the back surface of the same, and a spine jacket positioned on the spine portion constituted by the aforementioned sides to which the adhesive paste has been applied. Hereinafter, for ease of description, the direction along the aforementioned side of the printed object to which the adhesive paste has been applied is a longitudinal direction, while the direction along the sides orthogonal to the side to which the adhesive paste has been applied is a lateral direction. In other words, it is assumed that the side of the printed object resulted from the bookbinding along its spine portion and the side of the printed resulted from the bookbinding along its spine portion and the side of the printed object along its opening portion are the longitudinal sides of the printed object, while the sides of the printed object along its top and the bottom portions are the lateral sides of the printed object. Similarly, it is assumed that the sides of the jacket which are parallel to the longitudinal sides of the printed object are the longitudinal sides of the jacket, while the sides of the jacket which are parallel to the lateral sides of the printed object are the lateral sides of the jacket.
In some cases, an image forming apparatus having a bookbinding function performs printing for jackets. In this case, the sizes of paper sheets for use in printing for jackets, namely the longitudinal and lateral lengths of the paper sheets are one of important factors.
The length of the longitudinal sides of a jacket is determined by the length of the longitudinal sides of the printed object to be subjected to case binding. For example, the length of the longitudinal sides of the jacket is determined to be the same length as that of the longitudinal sides of the printed object to be subjected to the case binding or to be the same length thereas plus a predetermined length. The length of the lateral sides of the jacket (namely the width) is determined by the sum of the length of the lateral sides of the front jacket portion (referred to as a front jacket width), the length of the lateral sides of the back jacket portion (referred to as a back jacket width) and the length of the lateral sides of the spine jacket portion (referred to as a spine jacket width).
Out of the front jacket width, the back jacket width and the spine jacket width, the front jacket width and the back jacket width are determined by the length of the lateral sides of the printed object to be subjected to the case binding. For example, the front jacket width and the back jacket width are determined to be the same length as that of the lateral sides of the printed object to be subjected to the case binding or to be the same length thereas plus a predetermined length. However, the spine jacket width depends on the thickness of the printed object to be subjected to the case binding. Accordingly, there is a need for accurately calculating a thickness of the printed object to be subjected to the case binding.
As a method for calculating a spine jacket width, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2006-172306 discloses an information processing apparatus which preliminarily stores correspondence between “types” of printing paper sheets and the thicknesses of the printing paper sheets, obtains the thickness of printing paper sheets from the “type” of printing paper sheets specified by a user and calculates a spine jacket width by multiplying the obtained thickness by a number of printing paper sheets specified by the user.
However, with the spine-jacket calculating method disclosed in the document, the thickness of printing paper sheets used therein is a value which has been preliminarily stored in the information processing apparatus in association with the “type” of printing paper sheets and, therefore, is not the thickness of printing paper sheets which are actually stored in a printing apparatus. Accordingly, in a case where the printing apparatus stores printing paper sheets of types different from that of printing paper sheets specified through the information processing apparatus, the thickness of the printed object to be subjected to case binding becomes different from the calculated spine jacket width.
Further, in a case where a printed object to be subjected to case binding is constituted by plural sorts of printing paper sheets, namely in a case where a job for printing for creating a printed object to be subjected to case binding is constituted by plural sorts of printing paper sheets, it is impossible to obtain the spine jacket width with the spine-jacket calculating method disclosed in the document.
If the width of the jacket to be used for case binding, particularly the spine jacket width, is not accurately calculated, this will induce problems as follows.
Namely, as a first problem, if case binding is performed using a printed jacket, the width of the jacket will not conform to the sum of the width of the front jacket portion of the printed object the width of the back jacket portion of the printed object and the thickness of the printed object to be subjected to case binding. This will induce the problem that the position of the printed jacket is deviated from a correct position, thereby resulting in an unbeautiful product.
In a case where an image forming apparatus is caused to perform printing for a jacket for use in case binding, a user creates image data in such a way that the image data conforms to a calculated width of a printing paper sheet and specifies the created image data as image data to be used for printing for the jacket through the image forming apparatus. For example, it is assumed that the front jacket width, the spine jacket width and the back jacket width are determined through calculations to be 200 mm, 20 mm and 200 mm, respectively, and the user creates image data for use in printing for a jacket on the assumption that the width is 420 mm, based on the result of the aforementioned calculations. In a case where the actual spine jacket width conforms to the spine jacket width of 20 mm resulted from the calculation as illustrated in FIG. 8A, if the aforementioned image data for use in printing for the jacket is printed on a printing paper sheet with a width based on the actual spine jacket width, the printing for the jacket is attained at a state where the width of the printing paper sheet conforms to the width of the image data, as illustrated in FIG. 8B. However, in a case where the actual spine jacket width is smaller than the spine jacket width of 20 mm resulted from the calculation as being represented as 10 mm in FIG. 9A, if the aforementioned image data for use in printing for the jacket is printed on a printing paper sheet with a width based on the actual spine jacket width, the width of the printing paper sheet is smaller than the width of the image data, thereby resulting in printing for the jacket at a state where a portion of the image data is chipped, as represented as a portion A in FIG. 9B. On the contrary, in a case where the actual spine jacket width is larger than the spine jacket width of 20 mm resulted from the calculation as being represented as 30 mm in FIG. 10A, if the aforementioned image data for use in printing for the jacket is printed on a printing paper sheet with a width based on the actual spine jacket width, the width of the printing paper sheet is larger than the width of the image data, thereby resulting in printing for the jacket at a state where there exists an redundant space on the printing paper sheet, as represented as a portion B in FIG. 10B. Namely, as a second problem, there will be induced the problem that the image data for use in printing for the jacket can not be properly printed on the printing paper sheet.